Formed as a side project between Jesy Fortino who is better known as Sub pop experimentalist Tiny Vipers and Liz Harris of acclaimed drone pop outfit Grouper. “Foreign body” is the result of songwriting unison in Harris’s hometown of Portland and a meeting of two minds that share the same vision of deep, conceptual minimalism and the creating of mood through ambience and melody.
After opening track “Fell Sound” with its slow burning, misty waves of calm reminiscent of Julianna Barwick’s transcendent 2011 album “The Magic Place”, The mixture of Harris’s spacey, enrapturing soundscapes and the hushed reverences of Fortino’s folky passages of music really comes into its own on “Silent From Above” .With its clean fingerpicked guitars and Fortino’s yearning vocals it’s the first real show of where this collaboration becomes a mutual input of ideas and creativity.
It’s an album that is hard to judge on song after song and in track listings, it would be redundant to do so. The overall vision of “Foreign Body” works as a whole encompassing piece of music, every song complimenting the palette of sound that precedes it. It’s meant to be listened to as a full piece of work and given the listeners undivided attention. The warmth of the earlier part of the records gives way to at points, starker sounds taking influences from Julee Cruise under the oscillating backdrop of breathy synths. Fortino and Harris have managed to make a seasonal record, taking in the atmospherics associated with climate changes that occur through the year. The bursts of warm, glowing air of “Drowning the Call” are evocative of shards of light in through trees in woodland areas or open fields and soft grass. It’s a sound made for the senses taking in the different months and ending with the stark, bleakness of “Mirror of Our Sleeping” which is barren in sound apart from haunting chamber vocals and a crackly synth line reflecting the loneliness of the most desolate winters.
Hopefully “Foreign Body” will be released to little fanfare allowing this beautiful, minimal companion to quietly enter into your life. Repeated listening will unearth more musical treasure making the reward of a record you come back to more appealing. Understatement in music sometimes is the most powerful tool in a musician’s repertoire and Mirroring proves that for Fortino and Harris understand this and each other more than most. Some side projects come across as a subtle battle of stubborn ego and it can bruise the musical output. Mirroring however, is forged on respect and on acknowledgement of each musician’s strengths and defining sounds.
Hopefully Mirroring will not be a one off project but if that is indeed the case it’s quite a mark to leave. The luckier listener’s ears and hearts that discover this are thankful already.
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